Billionaire Eric Schmidt, the former Google CEO who got kicked upstairs to the post of executive chairman, knows a thing or two about disrupting existing markets with new technology. Now consulting giant McKinsey & Co. is publicly picking Schmidt’s brain to share his thoughts on tomorrow’s most disruptive technologies.

— Data changes everything: “We’re going, in a single lifetime, from a small elite having access to information to essentially everyone in the world having access to all of the world’s information,” says Schmidt. “That has huge implications for privacy, communications, security, the way people behave, the way information is spread, censorship, how governments behave, and so forth.” He says it will also disrupt business, education, the media and intellectual property.

— The next revolution will come from biology. Scientists are now introducing the same thinking and analysis that produced the data/computer revolution into the world of living materials. “As we begin to say, ‘We’re going to take the analog world of biology — how genes work, how diseases work — put them in a digital framework, calculate for a while, do some machine learning on how things happen,’ we’ll be able to not only help you become a better human being, but predict what’s going to happen to you physically, in terms of your health, and so forth.”

Schmidt believes that as we better understand the mysteries behind the brain, DNA and protein folding (the process by which a protein structure assumes its functional, 3D shape), each of these breakthroughs will rank as “a serious step-change for humanity.” One key outcome will be the ability to instantly diagnose individual health problems: “There are now firms and foundations building databases of DNA to use, to move to a model of individual diagnosis of disease, where you literally just press a button, the sequences occur, and it tells you what’s wrong.”

— Technology is now producing affordable “ultrapowerful, ultralight, ultraconductive materials” that will change entire industries. And with the rise of inexpensive 3D printers, he notes, the benefit of these materials will soon filter down to small businesses and even individuals.

— The end of the computer interface? Look around your office and you’ll see people who interact with their computer with a keyboard, a mouse, their voice, or possibly even a gesture. Big deal, says Schmidt: he’s looking to the day when there will be no “interface” between people and their computers. “There’s a new generation of user-interface theory that says there should not be a user interface; the information should just be around you,” says Schmidt. He says a new product called Google Now already actually watches your behaviour and tries to figure out what you’re doing and anticipate your needs. “I think we’re going to go from the sort of command-and-control interfaces where you tell the computer [what to do], to a situation where the computer becomes much more of a friend.” He says that having been given permission to study your habits, the computer will be able to identify what you want to do, and then search its databanks to find suggestions or ways to help — for example, it may figure you’re driving from Calgary to Edmonton and ask if you want the latest traffic reports.

Some people may be nervous about Schmidt’s “computer as a friend” model, but he calls it the best of both worlds. “The ultimate model is that the computer does what it does well, which is these complicated, analytical, needle-in-a-haystack problems, and has perfect memory. And humans do what we do well, which is judgment, and having fun, and thinking about things. The relationship is symbiotic: The computer is making suggestions that are pretty good, they’re pretty helpful, but you are ultimately in charge.”

McKiney says this article represents just the first in a series of interviews on this topic with Schmidt — so stay tuned to the McKinsey site for more. When technology creates disruptions of this magnitude, you know they will create big winners and big losers — and lots of business opportunities in the middle for agile and fast-moving entrepreneurs who know how to take charge.